time, for it is growing daily and hourly—­but which at present give it an untidy, unfinished, straggling appearance.

While my father and I were exploring about together yesterday, we came to a print-shop, whose window exhibited an engraving of Reynolds’s Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, and Lawrence’s picture of my uncle John in Hamlet.  We stopped before them, and my father looked with a good deal of emotion at these beautiful representations of his beautiful kindred, and it was a sort of sad surprise to meet them in this other world where we are wandering, aliens and strangers.

This is the newest-looking place we have yet visited, the youngest in appearance in this young world; and I have experienced to-day a disagreeable instance of its immature civilization, or at any rate its small proficiency in the elegancies of life.  I wanted to ride, but although a horse was to be found, no such thing as a side-saddle could be procured at any livery-stable or saddler’s in the town, so I have been obliged to give up my projected exercise.

I have been to my first rehearsal here this morning, and wretched enough all things were.  I act for the first time to-morrow night Bianca, which they have everywhere chosen for my opening part; and it is a good one for that purpose, as I generally act and look well in it, and it is the sort of play that all sorts of people can comprehend.  There is a foreign—­I mean continental—­custom here, which is pleasant.  They have a table d’hote dinner at two o’clock, and while it is going on a very tolerable band plays all manner of Italian airs and German waltzes, and as there is a fine long corridor into which my room-door opens, with a window at each end, I have a very agreeable promenade, and take my exercise to this musical accompaniment....

I have at this moment on my table a lovely nosegay—­roses, geraniums, rare heaths, and perfect white camellias.  Our windows are all wide open; the heat is intense, and the air that comes in at them like a sirocco.  It is unusual weather for the season even here, and very unwholesome.

In a week’s time we are going on to Washington, where we shall find dear Washington Irving, whom I think I shall embrace, for England’s sake as well as his own.  We have letters to the President, to whom we are to be presented, and to his rival, Henry Clay, and to Daniel Webster, whom I care more to know than either of the others.

After a short stay in Washington we return here, and then back to Philadelphia and New York, till the 20th of February, after which we sail for Charleston.  There has been, and still exists at present, a very considerable degree of political alarm and excitement in this country, owing to the threat of the South Carolinians to secede from the Union if the tariff is not annulled, and the country is in hourly expectation of being